This invention relates to pallet guards for restraining items from tumbling off a pallet during movement by a lift truck and/or as items in cartons may tend to settle and shift while stored.
Pallets are used by the hundreds of thousands in industry to store and transport a multitude of products or other work items. Often the storage racks are several pallet tiers high. During movement thereof by the typical lift truck, abrupt starts or stops can cause the articles to topple off the pallet toward the lift truck operator. Further, when stacked cartons of goods on the pallets become weakened due to moisture absorption or other factors, the weight of top cartons can cause the stack to settle and lower cartons to be compressed unevenly, thereby tilting the stack, allowing some cartons to potentially slide off. Previously, banding of goods on pallets has been used to limit this type of occurrence. Also, special nets have been provided in front of storage racks to limit this type of occurrence. Finally, pallet guards have previously been designed as set forth in U.S. Pat. No. 5,220,980 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,279,405 for attachment to individual wood pallets to prevent the goods from dropping into the aisles or onto the lift truck operator. These pallet guards have been found to work effectively.
Prior guards in the above-noted patents, however, can be used for only one end of the pallet since the legs thereof extend through the pallet to the opposite end of the pallet for secure attachment to the pallet. There is little room to place a second guard on this opposite end extending back in the first direction, i.e., toward the lift truck end. Hence, although prior guards prevented items from toppling off the pallet in one direction, i.e, toward the lift truck or into the aisle, rapid initial movement of a reversing lift truck moving a pallet full of items from storage could cause items to fall off the back end of the pallet. Moreover, crushing of cartons could allow the top cartons to slide off the rear end of the pallet. These spills tend to damage the falling items, and/or other items struck by them, and/or the storage racks themselves, as well as being potentially dangerous and presenting costly pickup problems for the fallen goods. This is a problem.
Additionally, the increasing use of pallets molded of polymeric materials and of different design from the typical wooden pallet often prevents even these guards from being attached.
Another complication occurring with these prior pallet guard models occurs when the pallets are empty and must be returned. If the pallet guards are left in place, the pallets cannot be conveniently stacked for shipment. When the pallet guards are removed from the pallets, the pallets are then stackable, but there is no way of easily stacking the L-shaped pallet guards for return transport.